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A look at economic developments and activity in major stock markets around the world Friday:

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WASHINGTON — The leaders of eight of the world’s biggest economies meet this weekend outside Washington, seeking to keep Europe’s debt crisis from spiraling out of control and jeopardizing fledgling recoveries in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The turmoil in Greece is draining confidence in the 17 countries that use the euro. Borrowing costs are up for the most indebted governments. Depositors and investors are fleeing banks seen as weak. Unemployment is soaring as recession grips nearly half the eurozone countries. And global markets are on edge.

All that forms a tumultuous backdrop as representatives of the G8 countries — the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Japan, Russia, Italy and Canada — head to Camp David. Standing in the way of a breakthrough are disagreements over how to bolster Europe’s economy and avoid a broader catastrophe.

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MADRID — Chaos in Greek politics and Spanish banking combined this week to underscore just how fragile Europe’s economy remains after an eviscerating austerity regime that has spawned unemployment, desperation and misery. And there is no respite in sight, as Germany’s finance minister predicted Friday that the crisis could last up to another two years.

Wolfgang Shaeuble, who holds the region’s purse strings, chastised the leaders of the world’s biggest economies as they headed to Washington for a weekend summit that efforts to fix the crisis over the past few years “weren’t good enough.” The leaders, he told French Radio Europe 1, “must show that Europe can achieve common positions more quickly.”

But common positions have been in short supply.

After more than a week trying to form a government, Greek politicians gave up this week and called another vote for June — with no real reason to think it will get them any further from the chaos that reigns. Spain was forced to deny that a troubled bank faced a run on its deposits, then saw a major ratings agency downgrade 16 of its lenders and four of its semi-autonomous regions, similar to U.S. states.

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LONDON — Concerns that Europe’s debt crisis could drag down parts of the continent’s banking system rattled global markets on Friday, while the IPO of social network Facebook failed to buoy spirits on Wall Street.

Ratings agency Moody’s downgraded 16 Spanish banks late Thursday, three days after downgrading 26 Italian lenders, noting they are vulnerable to huge losses on government debt.

After a day of volatile trading, Britain’s FTSE 100 closed 0.7 percent lower at 5,267.62 while Germany’s DAX dropped 0.6 percent to 6,271.22. France’s CAC-40 shed 0.1 percent to 3,008.

Spain’s main stock index recovered 0.2 percent from heavy losses on Thursday, thanks mainly to a bounce back in the shares of state-controlled lender Bankia, which had plummeted on Thursday on reports of an increase in deposit withdrawals.

Wall Street tracked European stocks lower on Friday after Facebook shares failed to sustain early gains on their first day of trading.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.4 percent at 12,397.69 and the S&P 500 lost 0.4 percent to 1,299.88.

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 tumbled 3 percent to close at 8,611.31, its lowest finish in four months as signs of weakness in the U.S., a critical export market for Japanese companies, battered some of the country’s behemoth manufacturers.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dropped 1.3 percent to 18,951.85 and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slid 2.7 percent to 4,046.50. South Korea’s Kospi tumbled 3.4 percent to 1,782.46. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan and New Zealand also fell.

Mainland Chinese shares lost ground, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index losing 1.4 percent to 2,344.52. The Shenzhen Composite Index fell 1.5 percent to 940.91.

Benchmark oil for June delivery was down 77 cents to $91.79 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 25 cents to settle at $92.56 in New York on Thursday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.2711 from $1.2714 late Thursday in New York. The dollar rose slightly to 79.32 yen from 79.28 yen.

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PARIS — Germany’s finance minister estimates that Europe’s spiraling debt crisis could last up to another two years.

Wolfgang Schaeuble also says it’s vital that during this weekend’s summit in Washington Europe’s leaders show the world they are moving more quickly to stem the crisis that is jeopardizing economic recovery around the world.

Speaking on French radio Europe 1 Friday, Schaeuble said “In 12 to 24 months we’ll have a calming of financial markets.”

Schaeuble also said that Europe’s leaders “weren’t good enough” over the past two years of unending crisis in Europe and said “It’s very important during the G-8 to show that Europe can achieve common positions more quickly.”

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ATHENS, Greece — Germany’s chancellor apparently waded into Greece’s choppy political waters on Friday, with Athens saying Angela Merkel suggested that the country should hold a referendum on the euro together with next month’s national elections.

But government spokesman Dimitris Tsiodras ruled out the idea, which he said Merkel floated during a phone call with Greek President Karolos Papoulias earlier in the day.

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Twenty-one members of Golden Dawn were sworn into Greece’s Parliament on Thursday, making it arguably the most far-right party to enter a European national legislature since Nazi-era Germany.

Europe’s financial crisis is changing the tone across the continent, with frustrated voters turning to extremists on both the right and left. None seem as extreme as Golden Dawn, whose leaders claim that the Nazis did not use gas chambers to kill death camp inmates during the Holocaust. The party — which won 7 percent of the vote in a May 6 election — says it wants to rid Greece of immigrants and plant landmines along the border with Turkey.

The new parliament will hold power just one day because the election left no party with enough votes to form a government, forcing repeat elections next month. Recent polls show falling support for Golden Dawn, so it’s not certain to make it into parliament again. Still, many people across Europe are troubled.

“The Golden Dawn party is a dark stain on European politics,” said Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress. “For the first time in over six decades a seemingly long hidden Nazi ideology returned to power.”

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LONDON — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has elected a British civil servant as its new president.

The London-based bank announced Friday that its shareholders had appointed Suma Chakrabarti to serve as president for the next four years. He replaces Germany’s Thomas Mirow. Chakrabarti is currently a senior civil servant in Britain’s Ministry of Justice.

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LONDON — HSBC may decide to sell its U.K. retail banking operations, depending on the impact of yet to be announced new banking regulations, published reports say.

The Times and the Financial Times reported Friday that the new British regulations, which are expected to include a rule requiring banks to ring-fence their retail operations to shield them from investment banking, could mean that the retail side would fall short of HSBC’s profit targets.

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LONDON — British officials have given their word: “We won’t read your emails.”

But experts say the government’s proposed new surveillance program will gather so much data that spooks won’t have to read your messages to guess what you’re up to.

The U.K. Home Office stresses it won’t be reading the content of every Britons’ communications, saying the data it seeks “is NOT the content of any communication.” It is, however, looking for information about who’s sending the message and to whom, where it’s sent from and other details, including a message’s length and its format.

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DUBLIN — Ireland’s government denied Friday that it would stage a second referendum if voters decide this month to reject the European Union fiscal treaty, as has happened the last two times the Irish put a complex EU pact to their people.

Government leaders scrambled to limit damage to their campaign for a yes vote after Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton appeared to suggest that the treaty must be ratified — even if that meant telling uncooperative Irish voters to try again.

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ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey on Friday called on major international oil and gas companies seeking licenses to search for gas deposits off Cyprus to withdraw their bids, saying it will not allow exploration to go ahead and threatening to ban them from Turkish energy projects.

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CARACAS, Venezuela—Venezuela’s defense minister says a military helicopter has crashed during a training flight, killing four servicemen.

Minister Gen. Henry Rangel Silva says one of the five on board the helicopter was injured but survived.

Rangel says the Russian-made MI-17 helicopter crashed during a training flight at an airport in the western town of San Felipe.

He said among those killed in Friday’s crash was Col. Oscar Martinez Mora, a flight instructor and commander of a helicopter battalion in the town.

Rangel says the helicopter had been about 10 meters (11 yards) off the ground when it suddenly dropped and crashed. He says officials are investigating what might have caused the accident.

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama is using weekend gatherings of world leaders — dominated by discussion of European economic woes and Afghanistan — to solidify world resolve against development of an Iranian nuclear bomb and to encourage a more forceful response to worsening violence in Syria.

Obama will have the ear of key players on both issues during back-to-back G-8 and NATO summits that begin Friday evening at the secluded presidential retreat in Camp David, Md. Discussion will be aimed directly and indirectly at Russia, a sometime protector of both Iran and Syria and the chief blockade to such U.S. goals as an arms embargo on Syria.

The gatherings come in the shadow of the eurozone debt crisis and plummeting public support for the war in Afghanistan.

(Reuters) – British world champion Mark Cavendish won his third bunch sprint of this year’s Giro d’Italia and the 10th of his career in the race before confirming he would continue into the mountains.

The Team Sky rider’s triumph ahead of Alexandre Kristoff of Norway and Australian Mark Renshaw, a former team mate, was his 33rd Grand Tour win.

In his two previous Giros, in 2009 and 2011, Cavendish pulled out after roughly two weeks of racing but said he would carry on this time despite being involved in crashes on stage three and nine.

“When I came to this year’s Giro, I planned 100 percent on going to Milan and I really planned on a spell early on in the maglia rosa (of leader),” he told reporters.

NEW YORK—A prominent retired psychiatrist is apologizing to the gay community for a decade-old study that concluded some gay people can go straight through what’s called reparative therapy.

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, formerly of Columbia University, now says he no longer believes his work showed that.

For the study, Spitzer had interviewed 200 people who’d claimed some degree of change. The “fatal flaw” is that there is no way to judge the credibility of their accounts, Spitzer says in a letter he submitted last month to a journal that published his work in 2003.

The work made headlines when he presented it at a 2001 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. One reason for the attention was that Spitzer had played a leading role 30 years before in removing homosexuality from the list of mental disorders in the association’s diagnostic manual.

Spitzer’s study was attacked by critics who questioned the reliability of the accounts from the people he interviewed. At the time, Spitzer acknowledged that he had no proof their stories were accurate, but said several aspects of their accounts suggested their statements could not be dismissed out of hand.

Now he says his reasoning was wrong, and that “there was no way to determine if the subject’s accounts of change were valid,” he wrote in a letter to the editor of the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Spitzer, who lives in Princeton, N.J., sent a copy to The Associated Press after a reporter interviewed him about his change of heart.

“I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy,” Spitzer wrote. “I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some `highly motivated’ individuals.”

FRESNO, Calif.—Quarantines were lifted on two Central California dairies associated with a case of mad cow disease after investigators found no link between the illness and food the diseased bovine might have consumed, federal officials said Friday.

Tests performed by the World Organization for Animal Health also confirmed what U.S. labs had found: The cow had a random mutation of the illness that was unlikely to affect other cows in the herd.

The tests were part of an investigation begun in April when an examination of a carcass of a nearly 11-year-old cow taken to a Hanford rendering plant tested positive for mad cow disease, the nation’s fourth case and the third “atypical” strain to be discovered.

Mad cow disease is a deadly affliction of the central nervous system that can be transmitted to humans who eat meat from infected cows.

The rash of cases that occurred in Great Britain in the 1990s were caused by cattle being fed protein supplements made from the spinal columns and brains of diseased cows, a practice that has since been banned.

The California cow had what is known as atypical L-type bovine spongiform that scientists know happens occasionally.

In the disorder, a protein the body normally harbors folds into an abnormal shape called a prion, setting off a chain reaction that eventually kills brain cells.

Scientists say they do not yet know what causes this strain of the disease. The incubation period is two to eight years.

The USDA tests 40,000 of the 35 million cattle slaughtered annually for BSE, but some public health experts have called for more aggressive testing, especially in light of Friday’s announcement.

“If that’s true, then it’s even more important to increase surveillance since the feed ban could not be expected to prevent future cases,” said Dr. Michael Greger, director of public health and animal agriculture with the Humane Society of the United States.

He said adopting the European model of testing all older cattle, or the Japanese model of testing every cow slaughtered for human consumption would add mere pennies per pound of beef sold and lower the risk of human cases of the fatal disease.

As part of its investigation, the FDA and the California Department of Food and Agriculture examined feed records at the affected dairy and identified at least 10 suppliers. They said Friday that all were in compliance with regulations.

The California cow, which came from a still-unnamed Tulare County dairy, had been unable to stand when she was euthanized and hauled away to a plant that renders carcasses into animal food protein and other products.

Dairy operators are not required to report if their cattle contract neurological diseases.

Investigators with the California Department of Food and Agriculture and the USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service were still working to track down at least a dozen other living cows that were raised on a calf ranch with the sick cow. Calves taken from their mothers after birth are fed a protein supplement made from slaughtered cattle blood, and some question whether that blood might carry BSE.

Already investigators have tracked down two offspring of the diseased cow. One that was euthanized for testing turned out to be healthy. Another calf was stillborn within the last two years, but officials have not yet said what happened to the carcass.

Baker Commodities, the rendering plant where the diseased cow was discovered, is a voluntary participant in the USDA testing program.

BOSTON—Massachusetts lawmakers are reviving the debate over whether to require car manufacturers to provide software needed to diagnose car trouble to independent repair shops and vehicle owners, but supporters of the measure also want voters to decide this fall if it doesn’t pass.

The state Senate passed the measure late Thursday night. It now heads to the House of Representatives.

The bill previously passed the Senate in 2010, but failed to come up in the House. It calls for auto manufacturers that sell cars in Massachusetts to provide access to their diagnostic and repair information system through a universal software system that can be accessed by dealers and independent repairs shops, starting in 2016.

Security-related information would not be made available to owners and independent repair shops.

Supporters say the bill would bring savings and convenience to consumers, repair shops and even dealerships when it comes to repairing trade-in vehicles.

Art Kinsman, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Right to Repair Coalition, which represents more than 1,000 Massachusetts mechanics supporting the legislation, said it would provide mechanics and car owners the ability to purchase all repair information. As a result, he said, consumers will have more options for service, including do-it-yourself repairs.

“If they can’t get all of the information, do they ever really own their car?” he said.

But opponents argue that the information is already available to owners and mechanics, and it’s up to the person or shop to invest in the tools and training.

Daniel Gage, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said individuals have always had the “right to repair,” and many independent repair shops have the tools and software codes to fix a wide array of vehicles.

He said manufacturers must require dealerships to have updated tools and software to be “service ready,” but that they have no control over small, independent shops.

Additionally, there is no guarantee that cars made before the 2016 start date would be repaired at independent shops, Gage said, as they would not be included in the universal system as proposed under the bill.

“It all sounds great, it sounds like a magic wand,” he said, noting that if passed, the legislation could lead manufacturers to redesign cars across the board in an effort to comply with the Massachusetts law, resulting in higher sticker prices.

Gage also questioned whether the measure would result in lower repair costs, saying the bill has no provision to ensure that any savings are actually passed on to consumers.

Kinsman said the bill has a wide range of support from state residents and that his organization is working to gather enough signatures to ensure the measure will be on the November ballot if the Legislature doesn’t pass it.

“We want to make sure that one way or another, consumers have their say,” he said.

MIAMI—Richard Knabb, the tropical weather expert at The Weather Channel, will be the next chief of the U.S. government’s hurricane forecasting hub in Florida, federal officials said Friday.

The promotion to director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami fulfills a childhood dream for Knabb, who grew up in Coral Springs and Katy, Texas, and later was a forecaster at the center.

Knabb remembers watching the hurricane center’s director on local television news as Hurricane David aimed at Miami in 1979. The storm eventually swerved and made landfall farther north in Palm Beach County, but Knabb was hooked on the tropical storm forecasts.

“Largely that came out of personal, childhood fear. I wanted to be able to figure out how to forecast those things myself because they posed such a danger to folks in hurricane-prone areas,” said Knabb, 43. “From that point forward I think I knew that that was what I was going to end up doing as a career.”

Knabb started working at the hurricane center in 2001. He was a senior hurricane specialist at the center from 2005 to 2008, experiencing what other longtime forecasters called “decades of hurricane activity in just a few years,” thanks to the overactive and devastating 2004 and 2005 seasons.

“I was living the hurricane problem while I was helping others prepare for the hurricane problem,” Knabb said.

Knabb is already cautioning coastal residents to be prepared.

“One of these days another major hurricane is going to come to the U.S., and we need to be prepared. And that starts with me and my family,” Knabb said. “We’re going to be living in South Florida again, and we have to have a hurricane preparedness plan for our home and our family. And that will be just one of the examples I’ll try to set for personal preparedness.”

The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season was the sixth consecutive year without the U.S. landfall of a major hurricane. Those are storms classified as Category 3 or higher, with top winds of at least 111 mph. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is set to release its hurricane season outlook next week.

“At the helm, (the center’s) director must be the cool and calm voice that conveys this array of information that prompts life-saving actions from an individual to across all levels of emergency management and even internationally, and I firmly believe that our next director embodies this reputation,” said NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco.

After leaving the hurricane center, Knabb served as the deputy director of the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu. He joined The Weather Channel in 2010.

Knabb will replace Bill Read, who steps down as director June 1, the official start of the six-month Atlantic hurricane season.

Read’s retirement after four years as director is much calmer than his entrance in 2008. He replaced Bill Proenza, who only held the job for six months after replacing the popular Max Mayfield. Most of the center’s staff called for Proenza’s dismissal after they said he exaggerated problems with an aging weather satellite and undermined forecasters.

Earlier this week, Read said his successor would face the same challenge that has perplexed forecasters since Hurricane Andrew’s catastrophic Florida landfall in 1992: how to see how big a storm will be well in advance or whether a storm will rapidly strengthen into a major threat.

Knabb said NOAA’s Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project is showing signs of solving that and other forecasting problems. He also praised Read’s leadership and said he was eager to reunite with the hurricane center staff.

“I think they’re in a really good place right now,” he said.

Other hurricane specialists who work outside the National Hurricane Center applauded the selection of Knabb for one of the toughest jobs in weather forecasting.

Knabb is well qualified for the job, said Kerry Emanuel, an MIT meteorology professor who specializes in hurricanes.

“That job requires a terrific amount of energy and enthusiasm. It tends to burn people out. It’s good to choose a young person who has a lot of energy and experience,” Emanuel said.

Knabb not only has the scientific credentials to lead the hurricane center, he also understands the importance of the job’s communications aspect, said Heidi Cullen, a climatologist at the nonprofit Climate Central in New Jersey and a former climate expert for The Weather Channel.

“This is someone who is incredibly experienced and knows how to handle the really, really intense situation of broadcasting during hurricane landfall,” said Cullen, adding “you want someone who is not going to overhype a situation and really can communicate the risks and uncertainties.”

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AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report from Washington.

MEXICO CITY—The tortured body of a Mexican police reporter was found on the side of a road in the northern state of Sonora on Friday, a day after he was kidnapped by gunmen while waiting at a car wash, authorities said.

Marco Antonio Avila Garcia’s body was found inside a black plastic bag near the city of Empalme, about 68 miles (110 kilometers) south of Ciudad Obregon, where he was abducted, said Sonora state prosecutors’ spokesman Jose Larrinaga.

Larrianga said police also found a message signed by a cartel, but he wouldn’t reveal the message’s content.

The 39-year-old reporter often wrote about organized crime for the sister newspapers Diario Sonora de la Tarde and El Regional of Ciudad Obregon, said Larrinaga.

Avila was snatched and forced into a pickup truck Thursday by three masked gunmen as he waited for a company car to be washed in Ciudad Obregon.

Eduardo Flores, director of the newspapers, told The Associated Press that Avila wrote about drug trafficking but never mentioned cartels by name nor did investigative pieces.

“He wrote about drug trafficking, but nothing involved” about it, Flores said. “He wasn’t allowed to cover anything that would be considered aggressive by criminal groups.”

Flores said Avila was among the most experienced police reporters on his staff. The journalist never mentioned receiving threats or being afraid of covering the police beat. No threats had been received by the newspapers, he added.

The reporter was married and had three small children. He worked at night and during the day was going to university. He recently graduated with a degree in chemistry, Flores said.

Mexico has become one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists in recent years, with media workers disproportionately targeted as a government offensive against drug cartels and rivalry among crime gangs have resulted in tens of thousands of killings, kidnappings and extortion cases.

Last week, gunmen opened fire on the offices of the El Manana newspaper in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. The week before, police found the mutilated bodies of three photojournalists inside plastic bags dumped in a canal in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz.

Prosecutions in journalist killings are rarely carried out, which is generally the case with most homicides and other serious crimes in Mexico.

Mexico’s National Commission on Human Rights says 79 journalists were killed between 2000 and 2011. In addition, it said 14 of them have disappeared. Other press freedom groups differ with that number.

The commission said Friday it has opened an investigation into the death of Rene Orta Salgado, a journalist who had quit working for El Sol de Cuernavaca newspaper in the resort city of Cuernavaca in January. Police found Orta’s body inside his car’s trunk. A cause of death has not been made public.

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—A Massachusetts man who has been charged alongside a Rhode Island inmate who may face a death-penalty prosecution is asking for a new lawyer.

The request from Jose Alibal Santiago was forwarded to a judge on Friday in U.S. District Court in Providence.

Santiago says his relationship with lawyer Judith Crowell isn’t working and that he hasn’t been able “to find that level of trust and comfort.”

Santiago is accused of participating in a plot to rob a gas station manager in 2010. He has pleaded not guilty.

Jason Pleau (PLEW) is accused of fatally shooting the gas station manager outside a bank during the robbery. Pleau does not want to be tried federally where he may face the death penalty if convicted.

Crowell did not return a message for comment Friday.